The Beta version is based on a completely different set of program code and we have been able to implement much new functionality and improve old functionality. However, we are not done yet. During the late summer-fall 2008 we will make additional improvement to the website. We will also address some of the known limitations of the Beta version, such as the slow performance for very large datasets. Explore the Beta version and report bugs and/or give us feedback using the link in the page header.
The following is a list of some of the changes incorporated into the new Plant Atlas:
- Printer-friendly pages on 8.5x11” paper.
- Conform to important web accessibility guidelines (see http://www.w3.org/WAI/).
- Adjustable pages to fit the width of the user’s screen.
- Improvement of “help” and explanatory text.
- Redesigned and standardized website navigation.
- Home page redesign to promote usability, including:
- Integrated clickable map to facilitate browse by county feature.
- Announcements section on home page to announce important website changed.
- Slide show of latest plant images to enhance visual appeal.
- Search options exposed on header of every page and enhanced to include scientific name, common name, genus, family, county, and excluded names.
- A “browse by” option integrated into search to allow users to generate lists of plants by genus, family, and county.
- Search and browse results designed with a text-based tabular list of species and an optional image-based result list with large thumbnail plant images.
- Tabular results designed to enable downloading.
- Species information modified to include all species information on a single printable web page.
- Web pages created to present family and genus specific information (e.g. distribution, synonyms, etc.).
- Herbarium specimen imagery database integrated into Atlas.